


He Lives Like This

by shattered_glass



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Kinda, Love, M/M, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Sad super soldiers, Spoilers, Spoilers-ish, Unrequited Love, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 03:37:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4206513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shattered_glass/pseuds/shattered_glass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's exhausting, living like this. Thinking like this. Thinking about him. It hurts. More than Steve ever imagined.</p><p>Some days, Steve wants nothing more than to drive another plane into the ocean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Lives Like This

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, everything that's been going through Steve's mind since CATWS. Quick and simple Steve/Bucky work that I wrote in all but five minutes; so I apologize for any mistakes or suckishness that might occur! Just had a lot of thoughts after seeing Age of Ultron and needed to get it all out.
> 
> A lil bit of Natasha and Clint friendship in here. I suppose I am one of the few who absolutely loved the twist with Clint's famjam, and love that Natasha is such a friend to all of them, so I wanted to throw a bit of that in here!
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

It’s exhausting, living like this. 

His chest is constantly tight. The knot in his stomach is ever-present. His mind is always racing, chasing new ideas or realizations until he comes to the conclusion that they’re not new at all; he’s had the same thoughts before, maybe a day earlier, maybe a week. It gets lost in his head, sometimes. It never stops moving.

It’s exhausting to never stop thinking about James Buchanan Barnes. 

He’s never stopped thinking about him since that day on the bridge. Not once.

Sure, he’s had other things to occupy his mind as well. Ultron, for example. That was a big one. He thinks about the new Avengers. He thinks about how to train them, what drills to run through. He thinks about Sam, and about how grateful he is for Sam. Sam is his first real friend since Bucky. Tony and Natasha and Thor, they’ve all become friends, but there was something about Sam that reminded Steve of the simplicity of friendship. There were no underlying tensions concerning trust or betrayal or anything else. There was just friendship; going on runs together and grabbing coffee and laughing immaturely when Sam tripped walking off a curb and smacked into a car and caused the alarm to go off.

That wasn’t painful to think about. 

But even in those moments of almost-happiness, Steve was thinking about Bucky. There, with his new, blank eyes, in the back of Steve’s mind. 

Sometimes his thoughts were so depressing that Steve found himself wishing he could drive another plane into the ocean. He wondered if Bucky could ever be Bucky again, or if he was so torn apart and brutalized and molded that he would never be anything but a lost, empty man. Steve thought about what they did to Bucky, and those thoughts made him want to throw up. Natasha had gotten him the file on Bucky—the asset, they called him—and she gave it to him with grave eyes and a warning that Steve probably wouldn’t want to read it. Steve pressed her for any sort of a hint before he could bring himself to open the file, and Natasha just shook her head and said If it was Clint, and I was reading all this, I don’t think I would have been able to get out of bed this morning. Or any other morning. If you love him…I don’t think you should read it. 

Steve read it.

Steve loved Bucky more than he ever dared to admit, but he read it.

And the words on those papers were burned into Steve’s eyes since.

So now Steve thought not only about Bucky and what they once had, but he couldn’t stop imagining Bucky going through what they did to him. A cocky, funny, bright boy from Brooklyn. A kid. And it scared Steve more than anything when he imagined Bucky as anything but that. A few times, Steve thought of “The Winter Soldier” as just that—a soldier. Distant. Unfamiliar. And whenever Steve did that, his heart sank into his stomach and he ached to touch Bucky again, in whatever way he could, so he could remind himself that Bucky isn’t an asset. He’s not what they made him to be. Steve worried somehow that he’d forget that, and let Bucky slip through his fingers, watch him fall, down and down and down, into the abyss.

When Sam said to him that night at the party, “missing persons case,” Steve wanted to bend over the railing and throw up at the reminder that his best friend—his only remaining connection to the life he lived—his entire world—was wandering around the world as nothing more than a “missing person.”

The truth was, Steve had no idea what he wanted Bucky to be. Not an asset. Not the Winter Soldier. Definitely not a missing person. But besides that, Steve had no idea. Sometimes he’d wake up from dreams sweaty and winded—not nightmares, not on those nights—out of breath from images of his hands on Bucky’s skin, Bucky’s mouth on his neck, and noises that he knows Bucky makes when he’s flat on his back and gasping from pleasure.

It’s strange, to want a person so badly, especially a person who’s barely even a person anymore. Especially when Steve never once allowed that thought to cross his mind, back then; but it’s hard to look around all the love and acceptance that has surged in the past seventy years and not think about what it could be. Could have been. Steve doesn’t know anymore.

Those thoughts are the most painful. The thoughts riddled with guilt and longing and lust and, more than anything, just plain sadness. Steve wakes from those dreams and immediately reaches for the touch of Bucky, hot under his hands, Fuck, Bucky, please, please, and when he realizes just what he’s been thinking of and just how far from that he really is, he feels sick.

Natasha knows, he thinks. He doesn’t know how, but she knows.

Maybe it’s because whenever Steve talks about Bucky—which is very rare—Natasha pictures herself and Clint. She loves him and he loves her, more than either of them could possibly say. But Natasha loves Clint’s family and she loves Clint’s life and she doesn’t want Clint the same way Steve wants Bucky, so Steve guesses that she can see that difference, just like he can.

He almost wishes she loved Clint in that way, so Steve wouldn’t feel so alone, and he could say to her, Doesn’t it hurt? Don’t you want to die, some days? But she doesn’t. She supports Steve to the best of her ability, and Steve is grateful for it, and Steve loves Bucky all on his own.

Sometimes Steve thinks of Bucky smiling, or laughing. He remembers something funny that they said to one another over seventy years ago and aches to go back there, to hear Bucky laugh, to see the way Bucky smiles at him. 

To see Bucky safe and happy and a kid again. 

Some days, Steve doubts that he ever wants to see Bucky again. He doesn’t know if he can handle it. 

So, it’s exhausting living like this. Love and nostalgia and worry and lust and guilt and terror and sympathy all battle for prominence in Steve’s heart. They tear one another apart and it feels like a war is going on inside Steve’s chest, and he doesn’t know who’s winning. He just knows that it hurts.

But he’s a soldier. He’s been to war. He knows what it’s like when it hurts and when all you want to do is go home.

.

.

.

So he keeps fighting.


End file.
